12 Important Facts About the Future of Networking

12 Important Facts About the Future of Networking

A new research report from Cisco sees the consumption of network bandwidth increasing by several orders of magnitude between now and 2020.

The Growth of Mobile Computing

The number of global mobile users will grow from 3 billion (40% of the 7.3 billion global population) in 2015, to 4.1 billion (52% of the global population of 7.8 billion) in 2020. By 2020, Cisco forecasts there will be 26.3 billion total mobile-ready devices/connections, including 12.2 billion M2M connections. Mobile video will make up 82% of mobile data traffic by 2020.

Faster Broadband

Global IP Traffic Growth

By 2020, global IP traffic will reach an annual run rate of 2.3 zettabytes per year. Global IP traffic will increase threefold from 2015 to 2020. Global IP traffic will show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%, reaching 194.4 exabytes (EB) in 2020 from 72.5 EB in 2015. The two regions with the largest volume of traffic, the Asia-Pacific and North America, will account for 65% of global IP traffic by 2020.

The Number of Connected Devices

Cisco forecasts there will be 4.5 billion connected devices in North America by 2020 alone.

The PC Effect

PCs will become one of many devices. Globally, PCs will go from accounting for 53% of IP traffic in 2015, to 29% of IP traffic in 2020. Global IP traffic from non-PC devices was 47% of total IP traffic in 2015, and will be 71% of total IP traffic in 2020. Portable devices, such as smartphones and tablets, accounted for 15% of IP traffic in 2015 and will be 43% of IP traffic in 2020.

IoT Impact

M2M connections will grow 2.5-fold during the forecast period, at a 20% CAGR to 12.2 billion connections by 2020. Globally, M2M modules accounted for only 1% of IP traffic in 2015 and will be 3% of IP traffic in 2020. M2M traffic will grow more than sixfold during the forecast period, at a 44% CAGR to 6.2 EBs by 2020.

Rise of Connected Health

By 2020, there will be more than 729 million connected health connections globally, up from 144 million in 2015. Connected health will be the fastest-growing M2M vertical with a 39% CAGR or fivefold growth over the forecast period.

IPv6 Finally Gets Its Due

48% of all mobile devices globally will be IPv6-capable by 2020. M2M emerges as a key segment of growth for IPv6-capable devices, reaching nearly 3.7 billion by 2020, a thirteenfold increase during the forecast period. The CAGR for IPv6 is projected to be 27% through 2020. Global IPv6 traffic grew 243% in 2015. IPv6 traffic will grow sixteenfold from 2015 to 2020, a CAGR of 74%.

Growth of Wi-Fi Hotspots

Globally, there will be 433 million hotspots by 2020, a sevenfold increase from 64.2 million in 2015.

Gigabytes of Traffic per Month

The average Internet user will generate 44.1GB of traffic per month in 2020, up 134 percent from 18.9GB per month in 2015, a CAGR of 19%. There will be 2.2 billion business Internet users (65% of the global workforce) and 577 million business mobile users (17% of the global workforce).

Total Number of Devices

There will be 6.9 billion business devices and connections (up from 3.9 billion in 2015). The average business Internet user will have 3.1 devices and connections. There will be 1.8 billion business mobile device and connections (up from 1 billion in 2015).

The Coming of the Smart Home

By 2020, there will be more than 200 million smart homes globally, up from 90 million in 2015. By 2020, a single smart home video surveillance camera will drive as much as 2.4GB of monthly traffic on average, up from 1GB in 2015.

Cisco is forecasting that by 2020—less than four years away—not only will there be more devices than ever connected to the Internet, but the amount of bandwidth each of those devices will be consuming will increase by several orders of magnitude. In a Cisco Visual Networking Index report, the networking industry leader assumes that by 2020 the vast majority of devices will have access to 10M-bps connections that will make it feasible for almost any device to consume, for example, larger amounts of video. Cisco forecasts that the biggest areas of networking growth will come in the form of a nearly sevenfold increase in WiFi hot spots as well as a spike in traffic being generated via machine-to-machine (M2M) networking driven by increased adoption of Internet of things (IoT) applications. For solution providers across the channel, this means networking will continue to be a major source of revenue and profits for years to come. In fact, each device that attaches to the Internet winds up not only creating more demand for network bandwidth, but also a whole range of service spanning everything from data storage to application management.